Their fingers came inches from touching, but the two sides of the fissure drove apart, and the moving earth took Marcus out of her reach.
The woman with the white-streaked hair pulled energy toward her. The energy felt strange to Maggie. It came up from the fissure. Something from the core of the earth. Maggie couldn’t identify the source of the energy or what the woman was attempting to do with it. Maggie turned her head.
The woman stood tall, both arms reaching out above her head in a V-shape with balled fists. The energy swirled around her. It danced and eddied and rushed through her.
Justine hadn’t moved. She stared at the white-haired woman, her face a mask of shock. As Maggie watched, Justine began to shake. It wasn’t the exaggerated, jerky motions of convulsions, but rather violent trembling, as if Justine’s very cells vibrated.
As the wave of energy expanded, so did the fissure. Justine began to melt. Her entire cellular structure seemed to break down into liquid form. No blood or viscera showed itself, though. She broke down too quickly. In a matter of seconds, she’d dissolved into a puddle of slime. It evaporated before the wind.
As it did, a surge of energy pulsed through Maggie. It felt euphoric, but she didn’t have time to focus on it. Her palm rested on the ground six inches from the initial crack. The earth fell away, bringing the edge of fissure nearer and nearer. The dirt crumbled beneath her fingertips, then her knuckles. Empty air spread across her palm.
Maggie fell forward, into the abyss. She dug her toes into the dirt to keep from going over the side, but the ground collapsed beneath her elbows, her shoulders, her chest...
Marcus yelled her name from the other side of the ever-growing void. A glance up showed his arm still outstretched. His side of the chasm wasn’t falling away, just retreating.
Maggie tried to scrabble backward, but had nothing below her arms to use as leverage. Only air. As thoughts of a long fall with a sudden stop at the end paralyzed her lungs, a strong hand grabbed a handful of her shirt. It yanked her unceremoniously backward. Her feet didn’t touch the earth until she fell heavily against David’s chest.
“Get back!” he yelled. The sound of his voice had been constant since she’d moved toward Marcus. She didn’t register it until she saw his lips moving.
Maggie gazed toward Marcus as David wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her backward. The widening fissure followed them.
Close by, Colin backed away from the oncoming nothingness. Shaking himself, he turned on his heel and ran. The patch of earth under his feet buckled, crumbled, and disappeared. Colin fell screaming into the abyss.
Suddenly Marcus’s side of the chasm—now a good hundred feet away—fell from Maggie’s line of sight. She sucked in a breath, thinking his side of the breach had actually fallen. The sensation of ascending registered, and she realized her and David’s side was rising.
It grew shakily toward the sky for long seconds. David tightened his grip and Maggie turned to clutch his arm. It stopped with a jolt, depositing both Maggie and David on the ground, a horrifying amusement park ride. Maggie didn’t move. She stared at the black clouds roiling above and let the cool wind blow over her, savoring the sensation of stillness.
AS DOC AND JOAN DESCENDED, the mountain began to shake. At first they stopped, clinging to one another, but the quake didn’t subside.
“We have to keep going!” Doc shouted and Joan nodded. They started down again, though the rumbling made it exponentially harder to make progress.
After Marcus wiped out Colin’s army, another group of Trepids sprang from the nearby foliage, making for Marcus. Karl, of course, jumped right in. Doc caught glimpses of him dancing back and forth with Trepids between trees and boulders as they skidded by. Karl, a large man in terms of brute strength, was worth five normal-sized men. Even he couldn’t keep the upper hand against a dozen Trepids, though.
The white-haired Maggie did something Doc couldn’t see clearly, though he could feel it, and the land split, collapsing into an enormous, rocky canyon. Karl had already dispatched four of the Trepids and managed to push another three over the side of the cliff.
He turned to face the others, but Karl’s strength was beginning to ebb. Doc couldn’t help him neurologically. He didn’t have the talent for it.
Joan didn’t have Offensive energy either, but she had the talent of Protection. As they made their way down the rumbling mountain, she put up shields, harder than iron, between Karl and his attackers. The Trepids simply moved around them. If Joan could have seen clearly, she could have continuously moved the shield to where Karl needed it, but the fight took place in the shadow of the mountain, and she and Doc moved too quickly to keep track of everyone. By the time she identified Karl’s location and slammed the shield into place, the fight moved to another part of the clearing.
As they slid the final distance down the slope, Karl became pinned. Two gargantuan Trepids held his feet. Two more knelt on his shoulders to keep them on the ground. The fifth hovered over him with an eighteen-inch knife.
“Joan!” Doc yelled, regretting the decision not to bring Nat down the mountain with them.
“I see it,” Joan yelled back. Doc felt her slam a shield between Karl and his would-be killer. When the knife descended, it would hit her shield rather than Karl’s chest.
It turned out to be unnecessary. As Doc watched, a tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned woman stormed out of the foliage carrying a knife, her blazing eyes intent on the Trepid brandishing the knife over Karl’s chest. The woman leapt up onto the Trepid’s back and slammed her blade through the back of his neck. It protruded through the front of the Trepid’s throat with little blood, but a blow like that with a blade that size would have severed the spinal cord instantly. The Trepid crumpled to the ground.
Karl wrestled free, landing a savage kick to one of the Trepid’s jaws, and the man went down hard. The dark-haired woman got out of the way, and Joan used her shield to push the other Trepid holding onto Karl’s foot back away from him. The Trepid fought against Joan’s shield, appearing to walk in place against air.
Karl resumed his fight with the two Trepids at his arms while Joan held the moonwalker and the one with the shattered jaw at bay. Karl bested one of his two opponents. Offensive Energy came from above and knocked the other three over the edge of the cliff. Karl swiveled to look up toward Doc and Joan, but the energy hadn’t come from them. It came from higher up the mountain.
Nat, Doc thought. Once the Maggie with white hair jumped, Nat had nothing more to do up there. He must have started down after them and seen Karl’s fight from afar. He, like Maggie and David, had a talent for Offensive Energy.
Karl raised his hand to them in acknowledgement and greeting, and Doc and Joan made their way down to him. Nat came soon after.
DAVID’S FACE APPEARED above her. “Maggie? You all right?”
She nodded weakly and he helped her into a kneeling position, preparing to pull her to her feet. Behind him, a shimmering light caught her eye.
The woman who looked just like Maggie ended up on their side of the divide. Everyone else, including Jonah, Lila, and Karl, were on Marcus’s side.
Maggie stared over David’s shoulder and he turned to follow her gaze.
“Who is that?” Maggie whispered, throat still raw from her earlier screaming.
Either David hadn’t seen the woman earlier or he hadn’t paid attention. When his gaze fell on her, his eyes widened. Awe and alarm battled for places on his brow.
The Maggie with white hair wasn’t looking at them. She stared across the chasm at Marcus. Marcus gazed back at her. As Maggie watched, the other her gathered energy. Blue claws laced with white. The energy of a Traveler.
Then, she disappeared.
David turned back to Maggie after a moment, looking troubled. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, realizing she was. She actually felt good. Better than she had any right too. She remembered the euphoric feeling when Justine was vaporized. Could
it only have been relief that Justine could no longer hunt her? Maggie didn’t think so.
David gazed at her with wide, concerned eyes.
“I’m fine, David. I think...I think I was linked to Justine somehow.”
His frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
“Every time I got hurt, she seemed stronger. I didn’t think much of it. Of course I’m weak right now, so she would seem stronger. When she disintegrated.... I haven’t eaten or slept much in days, but I feel like I could run a marathon.” Maggie rubbed her forehead. “Does that make any sense to you?” It certainly didn’t to her.
David’s brows knitted together in concentration. “She became stronger when you were weaker. And vice versa. Did she do anything to you I don’t know about?”
Maggie thought, then nodded slowly. “Yes. When she first got to Kadin’s cabin, before you got there, she put her hand on my neck. I didn’t know what she’d done but after that I couldn’t touch my abilities when she came near.”
She wouldn’t have thought David’s frown could get any deeper. It did.
“What does it mean, David?”
“You couldn’t use your powers because she was. You were two halves of a whole, and she was in control, so when you neared her, you couldn’t direct your own talents. She did. It sounds an awful lot like Imposed Reflection. It’s a form of quantum entanglement. A dark form.”
Maggie stared at David blankly. “What?”
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose briefly. “It’s a way of...not exactly mind control, but neurochemical control. Its compulsion, slavery—no different than any other kind because you didn’t give permission. I’ve heard of it before, but never seen it used. It takes a great deal of power to implement, and knowledge of...forbidden things.”
“I think it’s safe to assume Justine met both those requirements,” Maggie said softly.
David nodded, turning to gaze at where the white-haired version of her had disappeared. “We need to figure out what happened here today. There are so many things I don’t understand.”
“Yeah,” Maggie muttered, getting to her feet, “I think Doc’s going to want a long powwow about this one.”
Chapter 29: Come What May
ONCE THE EARTH STOPPED heaving, Marcus’s eyes found White-Haired Maggie. She stood on the other side of the chasm—not far from David and her younger self—looking at him. The earth shivered with soft aftershocks that felt delicate compared with its prior motion. Marcus kept his eyes on her.
From so far away, he couldn’t make out the details of her face, but he could tell she was looking at him. He could picture her eyes as they’d stared at him from up close only minutes before—had so short a time passed? Something about the sadness in her eyes haunted him. What year did she come from? What happened in her world to make her eyes look like that?
In an instant, she disappeared, winked out of this time. Marcus’s gaze roamed to where David and Maggie struggled to their feet. David saved Maggie’s life. Much as Marcus hated to admit it, he now owed his brother. A lot.
He scanned the canyon. It was identical, of course, to the one he and Karl happened across three months from now. Odd to think he’d been present at its creation. The first time he sensed it, he couldn’t have known he would be. Marcus rubbed the bridge of his nose. He hated time Travel. He didn’t know how Karl dealt with all the headaches.
Thunder rumbled and four seconds later lightning lanced across the southern sky while the black clouds roiled overhead. They would break open soon. The cold wind felt good on his face. He willed his heart to slow and the strength to return to his muscles.
He glanced up to find Maggie coming toward him. For as much pain as she’d been in a few minutes before, she moved with spry alacrity—like she’d had days of sleep.
The chasm had become a strange sort of canyon. It began only fifty yards to Marcus’s left, where the earth simply fell away. Farther on, the two sides remained connected across a bridge of land. David and Maggie headed for it, obviously meaning to join the rest of them on this side.
Marcus staggered to his feet, and immediately wondered if he would make it. He wanted to meet her half way, but his muscles felt like jelly, his joints like blocks of cement. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to take more than a few steps. Still, he put one foot forward, then the other, and his movements became more fluid with each step.
Maggie and David reached their side of the land bridge long before he reached his. When Maggie noticed him coming, she quickened her step. They met much closer to his side than to hers.
Maggie ran forward the last few steps and threw herself into his arms, nearly knocking him on his butt. He managed to stay upright. The next moment his knees gave out.
He didn’t care.
Maggie fell to her knees with him and wrapped her arms around him, her knees clinging to his hips. He crushed her against his chest.
David stayed back a few feet, head down. After a few moments, he moved again, walking wide of them toward the other side of the bridge.
As the cold wind whistled across the land bridge and down into the canyon, images of a teenaged David flashed in Marcus’s head, and the final piece of the memory came.
Relief and fear swelled side by side in Marcus’s chest when, after ten days of travel and another five of hoping and loitering, a handful of upright figures appeared on the slope above him. His father had explained from his litter in pained, raspy tones that he knew where to go, but not exactly how to get inside the mountain compound. Once in the right vicinity, the people of the compound would find them.
Marcus wandered the slopes of the mountain range for days, hoping someone would come to help. When they didn’t, he began to fear he’d come to the wrong mountain, or perhaps his father’s information was incorrect. Finally, he’d started in another direction. The food had run out and if this Interchron didn’t exist after all, he needed to find shelter to nurse his father back to health. If he could.
Hiding himself and his father in a hollow created by the natural overhang of the riverbank, Marcus concealed them from the collectivists after David left. He’d found the hollow several days before the events in the meadow while filling their water skins at the river. He’d slipped on some mud and landed on him rump, his hand punching through a thin layer of mud to reveal the hollow beneath. At the time, he thought it would be fun to show David. Even from the opposite shore, the hollow was largely concealed.
Marcus dragged his father there from the meadow and then ran faster than he ever had in his life to their camp to collect supplies. His heart pounded in wild fear the entire time, but he’d gotten back to his father unseen.
The collectivists stayed in the area for nearly a week searching for them. Several times they’d come so close, Marcus could hear them speaking or stomping around on the bank above him. He hadn’t heard or seen anything else of David, though.
When there hadn’t been any sign of them for three days, he left the safety of the hollow. His father wasn’t getting better, or at least not quickly.
Since the events of the meadow, his condition had barely changed. Marcus doubted the constant traveling helped. He feared the collectivist woman might have caused some kind of brain damage. Danic needed help. More than Marcus could give him.
Marcus constructed a litter, put his father on it, and started walking. That was ten days ago. Ten days crossing alien terrain with no one to speak to except his fever-ridden father.
The emotions came and went faster than the tides of the sea. On the third day, the guilt set in and Marcus collapsed in tears. He should have done better by David. He was supposed to protect his little brother. He should have tried to drag him along. He shouldn’t have agreed to the drilling.
The next day, the anger reared up again. How could David have done this? The more he thought about it, the more he seethed. It made his face flush and his heart pound. It spurred him onward, despite his hunger and exhaustion. He fed on the anger; kept it burning so
he could get his father help.
Now, as the figures appeared from the direction of the mountain, Marcus prayed his father had been right about these people. Would these people be any more decent than the collectivists who’d tried to absorb them in the meadow? Father believed they could be trusted.
Danic spoke of a white-haired doctor who led them. The man leading the small party down the mountain certainly fit the bill. Thin, white hair blustered around his shoulders. He wore a close-clipped, well-groomed beard. Up close, he seemed vaguely familiar. Wispy memories of father talking with this man years ago surfaced.
Behind him walked four others. Three men—two had dark skin, the other was heavy-set—and a woman with dark, bobbed hair. They were all clean and appeared well-fed.
Marcus stopped and let them walk the rest of the way to him. His shoulders ached from pulling his father’s weight uphill and his calves and thighs were entirely numb.
The old man stopped six feet away. His eyes ran over Marcus, the litter, his father, and Marcus had the unsettling feeling this man knew the details of the situation without being told.
The old man reached out a tentative hand. When Marcus didn’t flinch away, it rested on his shoulder. Something about it felt remarkably comforting.
“Are you Marcus?”
Somehow, it didn’t surprise Marcus that the man knew his name. He nodded. “My...father. He’s hurt. Bad.”
Nodding, the old man stepped closer. “We will care for him. We have Healers here.”
The sympathy in his expression made Marcus’s eyes water and he wanted to crumple to the ground.
“Welcome to Interchron, Marcus. You can call me Doc. Let’s get you and your father inside and settled. Then you can tell me what’s happened.”
Quantum Entanglement Page 32
